US plans its largest sale of heavy bombs to Israel - critical summary review

What a 2,000-pound bomb does

The munition at the centre of this story is a bomb weighing about 907 kilos, designed to be dropped from aircraft. It is considered among the most destructive in the American arsenal, and The Washington Post described the MK-84 model as the most destructive in the Western arsenal. The blast from a bomb of this size can be lethal at more than 300 metres and leave a crater up to 15 metres deep.

There are several variants. Some detonate above ground and cause widespread damage. Others, such as the I-2000 penetrating warhead, are built to pierce structures and explode with a delay after passing through an outer surface like soil, rock or concrete. That is why armies use them against bunkers and tunnels.

That physical reach is the whole controversy. Human rights groups and some foreign governments have condemned Israel for dropping these large munitions in densely populated areas, at times killing dozens of civilians in strikes aimed at a single person. Israel argues that Hamas fighters in Gaza and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon deliberately mix with the civilian population, sometimes in bunkers or tunnels that require heavy munitions to breach. Many former US officials and military analysts question whether Israel has set aside less destructive alternatives too quickly.

The package, and who actually pays for it

According to US officials and a person familiar with the plan, all speaking anonymously, the Trump administration is preparing a munitions package worth 2.8 billion dollars for Israel. The Associated Press reported the deal includes 40,000 of the 2,000-pound bombs, made up of 20,000 MK-84s and 20,000 BLU-117s, and that the package is not yet final. O Globo, reporting the same plan, said it would also supply Israel with 20,000 I-2000 penetrating warheads. The plan was first reported by The Washington Post, which called it the largest single sale of 2,000-pound bombs Washington has arranged for Israel.

Although it is called a sale, most of it is to be paid through foreign military financing, an arrangement in which US taxpayer dollars are given to Israel, which then uses them to buy the weapons from the United States. It is not an exception: Washington provides Israel with baseline military aid of 3.8 billion dollars a year, including 3.3 billion that Israel largely spends on American weapons, among them the bombs in this package.

The State Department recently sent the proposed sale to two congressional committees for informal approval, an official said. In a statement, the department said that as a matter of policy it would neither confirm nor comment on a proposed arms sale that has not yet been formally notified to Congress.

Informal disapproval is not a veto. Congressional leaders can tell the administration they oppose the sale, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio can use emergency powers to proceed anyway, as has been done repeatedly, or simply declare that the sale will go forward and notify Congress formally. In that case, both the House of Representatives and the Senate would have to pass a resolution to block the deal, and that resolution would need the support of two-thirds of each chamber to survive a presidential veto. The Biden administration also declared an emergency in the region twice to bypass congressional approval and speed weapons to Israel during the war with Hamas, in packages that included tank ammunition and artillery munitions.

From Biden's hold to the largest package yet

In mid-2024, the Biden administration suspended a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel over concern about their use in densely populated civilian areas. Trump allowed that shipment to proceed days after taking office in January 2025.

The scale of the new package is what makes it stand out. DW reports that it exceeds comparable transactions carried out under Biden, who is estimated to have sold some 14,000 of these bombs after the Hamas attacks of October 2023, and also exceeds what the Trump administration itself notified previously. Last year, according to the Associated Press, the Trump administration bypassed the normal congressional review process and approved a sale of nearly 3 billion dollars that included more than 35,500 of the bombs.

Production and delivery of munitions normally take months or years, though there are ways to speed the process up. In other words, the political fight over this sale is happening long before any of these bombs reach an Israeli air base.

The trail these bombs have already left

The Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in October 2023 killed around 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage. Israel's offensive in Gaza has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians, including those killed since the ceasefire, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. A United Nations inquiry concluded that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, an accusation Israel rejects, saying its actions are self-defence.

The Israeli military has given few details about which bombs and artillery it has used in Gaza. Experts analysing strike footage and blast fragments found on site believe US-made bombs were used there against the tunnel network used by Hamas, and also killed people in densely populated areas.

The heaviest fighting has subsided since the ceasefire brokered by the United States took hold in October, but the violence has not stopped. Israel has continued to carry out strikes in Gaza, including some overnight into the day the package became public, which killed several people. Israel says its strikes respond to shooting attacks on its troops and other ceasefire violations.

Lebanon follows a similar pattern. Despite a ceasefire in force since June, Israel continues to strike the country. In a heavy bombardment reported in September, Israel destroyed an underground complex used by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, an explosion so powerful that the US Geological Survey recorded a magnitude 4.1 tremor afterwards.

The crack in American support

Public support for Israel in the United States has fallen since the Gaza war began, especially among Democrats. In a Quinnipiac University poll conducted in June, 48% of voters and 66% of Democrats said the United States supports Israel too much. The first time the question was asked, in 2017, those figures were 16% and 20%.

The proposal is expected to draw strong opposition from Democrats in Congress, some of whom have called for an end to all US aid to Israel. But the anger has also spread to traditional Trump supporters. Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, published a long critique on social media condemning Israel for what he called a "massacre" of Palestinians, argued that greater destructive power would make Israel more confident to act and would feed the conflict with Iran that the United States and Israel launched jointly in February, and blamed Netanyahu for persuading Trump to authorise it. "If you wanted to prolong the war with Iran indefinitely, this is exactly what you would do," Carlson wrote.

What to do with this information

The first thing to watch is whether the informal notification becomes a formal one. That is the moment the clock starts for any attempt to block the sale, and it is also the moment the administration can stop being silent about it, since the State Department says it will not comment before then. Given the two-thirds requirement in both chambers, a successful block is unlikely, so the formal notification matters less as a decision point than as the public record of what is being sold.

The second is Netanyahu's speech at the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, which was scheduled for the week after the package became public. It is the clearest read available on how far the strains between Trump and Netanyahu over operations in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran actually go, given that this sale suggests they are not slowing the alliance down.

The third is Lebanon. The next round of formal Israel-Lebanon negotiations, mediated by the United States, was pushed to October in Rome, with the two countries' ambassadors to Washington meeting in the meantime. The deal signed in late June provides for the Lebanese army to deploy in pilot zones evacuated by Israel, conditioned on Hezbollah disarming, which Hezbollah has repeatedly refused to do. A US State Department official called that deal the only viable path to restoring Lebanon's sovereignty and Israel's security. Whether it holds, while Israeli strikes continue, is the nearest indicator of where the regional escalation is heading, well before any of these bombs are delivered.